Holy Land, Isles and Crossroads

Our latest adventure is to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Holy land.  We are joined by our friends, Paul and Helen Colvin.  They missed their connection to Athens, mostly due to the passport control in Frankfurt (note to self and others: allow 4 hours for a layover) We stayed at the beautiful Grand Bretagne with a fabulous roof top bar and restaurant. 

The Colvins have been 3 days without luggage. (If we say “luggage” or “bag”, we have to drink) We are sailing on the Oceania Nautica. A smaller ship with less than 500 passengers. At the reception desk, the unfortuntate staff was subjected to horrific behavior from this much older, demanding demographic. Apparently, they gave a needlepoint group, kind of says it all. 

Santorini was our first stop yesterday. You are dropped at the base of a huge cliff which requires a cable car to reach the village. We met our guide for the day but ended up spending 2 hours in line while the passengers from a MSC ship pushed and jumped the line 50 at a time to the front every 5 minutes.  Total chaos. Fights were breaking out- (I was tempted) At least 800 people were vying for the 36 seats each trip. The villages of Santorini and Oia were absolutely mobbed.  Our guide Paul, from Greece a la carte, was great and extremely patient.

Today was Mykonos. When we opened the curtains from out stateroom, we saw 4 large ships, 3 of which were MSC- We nearly opted out of going to shore. We did go in for about an hour around lunch time when most of the crazies had left and did a fast walk around. I was very tempted to shove my way to the head of the line of MSC passengers waiting for their tender back to their ship but I refrained.

If you would like to follow along on this trip click here.